Good morning, everyone. We’re finally caught up on comment responses again and will continue to work on email responses today. We’re always glad to hear from you.

Here’s our new Saturday Symposium question:

How this works: It’s very simple. We ask a multi-part question related to a topic we’ve blogged about during the past week or are considering blogging about in the near future, and you, our readers, share your responses in the comments section. Feel free to be open, reflective, and vulnerable…and to challenge us. But as always, be mindful of the comment policy that ends each of our posts. Usually, we respond fairly quickly to each comment, but in order to give you time to think, come back, add more later if you want, and discuss with other readers, we will wait until after Monday to respond to comments on Saturday Symposium questions.

This week’s Saturday Symposium question: This week, Lindsey wrote a post on the difference it makes when people are open to having diverse groups of friends. This post focused specifically on how much more common it is for straight, cisgender people to have LGBT friends than it is for white people to have black friends. We are now asking you: what factors have an effect on who makes up your closest circle of friends? How do you think diversity within friend groups impacts our ability to understand experiences different from our own? Is there anything a person can do to avoid unintentionally limiting one’s circle of friends to those who have similar backgrounds? Does openness to developing friendships with diverse groups of people necessarily mean pursuing “token” friendships?

We look forward to reading your responses. If you’re concerned about having your comment publicly associated with your name, please consider using the Contact Us page to submit your comment. We can post it under a pseudonym (i.e. John says, “your comment”) or summarize your comment in our own words (i.e. One person observed…). Participating in this kind of public dialogue can be risky, and we want to do what we can to protect you even if that means we preserve your anonymity. Have a wonderful weekend!

Blessings,

Sarah and Lindsey

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.